A Weekend With Pushmo (NSFW)

What have I done? What… have I… done? I’ve taken the most vibrant, colorful, innocent puzzler in recent memory, and turned it into the raunchiest, pervy, most “problematic” game in my collection… and I like it! Reminding me a bit of Catherine, Pushmo is a puzzle game where you push and pull blocks of varying shapes to get to the top of the puzzle (or wherever else the goal is). One of the modes this game offers is a puzzle creator, with creation assets reminiscent of Mario Kart DS and F-ZERO GX, Animal Crossing, and Mario Paint. And so I took to the mode to try and make something. I had no idea what to make, until I remembered back to an old emblem I made in F-ZERO GX. The emblem in question was a red-headed character I once drew way back when, but with her breasts exposed. Sadly, I don’t have the means to extract that emblem out of the Gamecube memory card (nor do I know if that card went missing).

And so off I went to recreate this red-headed, big-boobed lady. I opted to not do the obligatory penis level since, well, I don’t do penis levels. Also, it’s kind of a given when you give players the option to create something in videogames. So I made boobs, the one human organ that’s been somewhat ignored in the creation scene. One share with James later, and this became a weekend that filled my time with pixels, puzzles, and lots and lots of boobs.

It goes without saying that the following article is Not Safe For Work. So if you’re there, wait ’til you get home (or for your boss/supervisor/Computer Overlord to not look). If you’re under the the age of 18, look elsewhere. The Wired Fish Network is not responsible for the ass beating you’ll probably get should you choose to scan these QR Codes.

Here’s the puzzle and QR code in full, the first puzzle that began my weekend raunchfest. Since it’s been a while since I did pixel art, I though I’d do something symmetrical, so I referred to the character in the intro paragraph. Thankfully, the puzzle creator used the stylus and not a control pad, so things could be done quicker. It was pretty hard to get her arms down correctly, eventually setting on a small indent below her shoulders.

What I didn’t take into account at first was that copious amounts of a single skin tone would actually make for a rather uninteresting or impossible puzzle. In this game, if the same color blocks are together, they’re move as one unit. So you can figure that if you move a boob, it will move everything else above you up to her neck. This soon became a puzzle about ladders and switches instead of a straight climb. And being that this was meant for the adult crowd, the “important” spots would be key to climbing to the top. Nintendo’s content filter blocked “Boobies,” So I called the puzzle “Humdingers” (thanks ScrewAttack!).

I shared it with James via Facebook and he liked it. “Cleared” he said shortly after scanning the QR code. “So you figured out the Hail Mary Jump?” I said to him, to which he responded, “Its easy once you hit the black switch, I’ve played a few custom levels that love hail mary jumps, so I got used to it.” I alluded to making more risque puzzles, to which he replied, “Keep em coming, they’re pretty fun.”

So the next puzzle I worked on was the main character from River City Ransom and his pixelated posterior when he’s at the sauna. Knowing that James and Anthony like River City Ransom, this would be a great puzzle for him to try out. Again, just like Humdingers, there was a lot of skin thus not very exciting puzzle-wise. So I threw a bunch of ladders around. It was here that I made an error in dimensional judgement, resulting in his right arm being cut off. The puzzles, when you unlock Deluxe Pushmos, are 32×32 pixels wide. I found this out after the fact.

So I started looking around for more naughty pixelated goodness, remembering a book that had a pinup of a woman in it. I didn’t remember the game it came from, but I remember the book from a ways back. I found the image over on FlyingOmlette, then remembered the game it came from, Secret of Mana. It was here where I learned another valuable lesson about making Pushmo puzzles: You only have 10 colors to work with, and this had more than that. This is where improvisation plays an important role, taking away the unimportant colors while keeping others. The unimportant ones were converted into colors that were common to the image.

For example, if you blow up the original image in an image editor, you’ll see that there’s four green pixels at the bottom. Those are the only ones in this entire image, and to have those there would take up one of the 10 much needed colors you’re alotted. So I turned them into pink pixels. Another unfortunate compromise was making the woman’s hair into a single-tone piece rather than a two tone one.

Lastly, on the gameplay side, this was the start of a sort of process. As I played these puzzles, I would see if I can make a straight climb it to the top without the need for switches and ladders. With this one, it was cleared without those. I passed it legit, and got my QR Code. And yes, you must beat your puzzle first to get your QR Code. A measure to make sure no one’s making impossible to beat puzzles just to troll people.

Then I hit a conundrum with the next pixelated nudity that I remember. The next puzzle I’d do was the Priestess Arcana from Taboo: The Sixth Sense. This was a game by Rare, made for people who like Tarot readings. The game had some moments of nudity, the most prominent being the Priestess. The conundrum presented itself when I realized that the Priestess was much taller than 32px. I put her in an my go-to image editor, GIMP, turned interpolation from Cubic>None (so that it says pixely and not make new colors I can’t work with), and what I got was a travesty. Practically all major features, like her boobs, those creepy yellow eyes, and the ankh that she’s holding, became this globby, indecipherable mess. No way in hell will I make a puzzle out of this.

So I came to another compromise. I would just select which part will be the puzzle. This explains why some Pushmos from the community, like Patricia Wagon from Mighty Switch Force, Ramona Flowers form Scott Pilgrim, and Shantae’s GBC sprite are cut off. If a sprite’s too tall, you’d just have to make do with part of the sprite.

The next puzzle I’d do would be the most difficult to deal with solely for the fact that, 1) it was pretty damn huge, 2) lots of images of it are .jpg, which is a big no-no for pixel art (they should be .gif or .png), and 3) shrinking her down with no interpolation like the Taboo Priestess also made all of her features indistinguishable. It was a big blob of nothing.

I’m of course talking about that damned woman from the infamous, unlicensed NES game from Panesian, Bubble Bath Babes.

As you can see, the above image is actually the second one from Bubble Bath Babes I worked on due to failed attempts. To be honest, I forgot where I got the image and what kind of interpolation I did. Evidenced by the gray pixels in certain spots that didn’t have those colors before, it wasn’t set to “None”. The resulting puzzle was one that was full of compromises, challenges, and a somewhat tricky climb. I wanted to include her boobs into the climb to the top (remember, adult audiences), but since I was able to climb straight to the top without any gadgets, to involve them would be meaningless. Plus, even if I were to put them, players would eventually realize that that it can be climbed without them.

I looked around the internet to see if anyone else had a mind as demented as mine, making nudey Pushmos for the M-AO crowd. There was one, and there was another, and some more, then a few more (site NSFW), and one of GoaOHSHIT!.. ahem, but that was it. Realizing that there wasn’t that many NSFW Pushmo’s to go around, this market was not being served well. So I set out to fulfill this market. As they say, variety is good.

What followed next was a trip through some the NES history that not many really knew of nor necessarily cared about.

I came across a game called Auto-Upturn. The game itself is virtually clean, save for two puzzles that were rather risque. The game was made Sachen, known for making many bootleg/unlicensed NES games. Auto-Upturn is a game where you walk around flipping panels to create a complete image. Looks frustrating to say the least.

Hot Slots is a game by Panesian, the same guys who made Bubble Bath Babes. As you might guess, this is an unlicensed NES slot machine game. The goal of the game is to get a lot of coins (obviously) up to a certain goal amount. As you gain more coins and get closer to your goal, you’ll be treated to an intermission with women in various forms of undress and bad Engrish.

For the puzzle, well, I wanted to get the whole image in here, so I made do with what GIMP showed me. Her face became an globby mess. It’s not even a face anymore. However, much of the puzzles I did actually look much better in the game’s thumbnail view.

Honey Peach is a Rock, Paper, Scissors game, again made by Sachen. When either you or the girl win a match, the winner chooses which article of clothing the loser takes off. If either one loses all three, you’re treated to either the nude woman or you covering your nuts. You can see gameplay here, but you might want to put the volume down as the “music” is horrible.

The full image, nor the naughty parts, of this lady were not very exciting for a Pushmo puzzle. So I opted for her face instead. There are others in the gallery below.

So after doing many NSFW Pushmos, I thought I’d take a break from the raunch and do some SFW Pushmos.

So here’s a SFW puzzle from an NSFW game, Golgo 13. Based on the manga of the same name, Golgo 13 starred a sniper named Duke Togo that took on targets he was tasked to kill. This game is known for the implied sex scenes where you did a girl to replenish your life. Thankfully Duke Togo’s got better taste in women than Link.

Unfortunately, I don’t know this girl’s name, so I opted to name this Pushmo after the game it comes from.

I gotta admit, Capcom’s The Little Mermaid had a pretty cool looking title screen. So I wanted to recreate that. Since the image is screen size, I had to shrink it down.

A good sprite of Double Dragon‘s Marion was pretty hard to find actually, both her front view and the panty shot one. Here’s the front view, and this one saw me doing some compromises with the color. The sprite this came from had some extra colors in there that went over the 10-color limit, so I had to make due. This was one of the few that I actually had to keep an uncommon color in, blue, since it denoted her earring and eyes, and were thus pretty important.

And yes, it’s a straight climb, so hop to it!

Seeing as I finally played some Donkey Kong ’94 on the Virtual Console and really liked the hell out of it, I thought I should make a Pushmo of Pauline as she appeared in the game. This is the Super Gameboy coloration. I’ll be making a more color accurate version later.

Here’s my favorite Pushmo, the Metroid. I’ve seen some Metroid Pushmo’s here and there, but none quite as detailed as the one I wanted to do. This one, like many 16-bit sprites I’ve dealt with, had a few extra colors that had to be changed into a common color. This meant that the brightest reds had to be converted.

Here’s the missile power-up from Metroid to go along with it. As simple as it looks to solve, this was actually pretty tough to make gameplay wise. I had no choice but to put a ladder to the main field of operation. From there on, it’s a straight climb.

Here my second favorite Pushmo, as well as one of the most difficult, the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VI‘s Siren. Right when I thought I would probably be able to do this, I forgot how detailed some of the battle sprites can get in 2D FF games, resulting in too many colors to work with and not enough allowed. There’s also the fact that the image I was using had her on a black background when she herself also has black pixels, making it hard to decipher what was her and what was background. I had to restart her, this time with a transparent background, and finally some color compromises. She was also shrunken.

And that’s all for now. So then, with all these Pushmos made, what’s the moral of the story? Well, if there’s a market, seize it! Nah, that doesn’t sound right (though it’s true in other cases). Boobs in tow, make a Pushmo! Nah that’s not good either (this it’s pretty true in this context). Ah, I know! Never, ever, EVER let me get too bored on a weekend and leave me to my own devices.

I’d like to thank James for introducing me to Pushmo before getting a 3DS, reminding me after getting one, and encouraging me to make more. You’re a bad influence James, but a good bad influence. Also, Hyper Danny, you make for an awesome censor bar. And no, his head is not in the actual puzzles.

Enjoy the rest of what I have to offer below. And check out our Tumblr page, The Wired Fish Network Extend, for any more Pushmos, both SFW and NSFW, that I (or probably James) might make in the future.